To all those New York parents with their thousand-dollar Netto cribs, organic-cotton onesies, “nanny coaches,” and birthday blowouts for 2-year-olds complete with tiger cubs and karaoke machines, Brooklyn author Ada Calhoun has a message: Enough.

“This book is a call for postpartisan parenting, free of self-righteousness or slavish devotion to any one parenting guru,” she explains in the introduction to “Instinctive Parenting: Trusting Ourselves to Raise Good Kids” (Gallery).

“We’re carrying our babies around in slings until they can walk, researching the hell out of our school districts, and asking our pediatricians 5,000 questions at our routine well-baby visits. We’re trying to provide the best, most nurturing environment possible, and in the process many of us are driving ourselves crazy.”

Former Babble.com editor-in-chief Calhoun is a soft-spoken peroxide blonde with a young son and a teenage stepchild of her own. In her funny, confessional work, she argues that as Generation X has risen up and taken its place at the minivan driver seats of modern culture, it’s overcompensated for the laidback attitude of its Boomer parents with an obsession with hyper-parenting that borders on the unhealthy.

Calhoun was moved to write the book after a particularly grueling fight with her husband when her son Oliver was a newborn. “I was kind of freaked out, and so read all the books I could get my hands on,” she says, recalling the night when she woke to find her baby happily sucking away at a bottle that had been propped up to his mouth, with her partner Neal nowhere to be found.

“I screamed at my husband that he was turning our son into a sociopath because some hardcore attachment-parenting writer had gotten inside my head and convinced me that propped bottles were the worst thing you could possibly do and that the kid wouldn’t know love or nurturing and would grow up to be obese and probably a serial killer. ‘Uh, I had to run to the bathroom,’ my husband said. ‘You have to throw those books away.’ I did, and I was immediately much happier.”

With a keen eye for the silliness of playground politics and a grounded take on what kids actually need (namely: love, food and shelter, and not much else) Calhoun makes a soothing case for distancing ourselves from today’s mania over perfect parenting. She suggests ditching the endless scrutiny of brands and ingredients and online forums and retreating to a less frenzied time, when people actually trusted their instincts. “In a recent article about nursery decorating,” she says, “an interior designer insisted that babies’ rooms must be clutter-free, painted in muted colors and carpeted. Or what? My son sleeps in a cluttered, red room that is also an office. I refuse to believe this has any effect on his health, well-being or future.”

In a section titled, “Defending Junk,” Calhoun asks, “You know who the biggest sugar addicts are?” Answer: “People denied candy as kids.” Our fears about danger are similarly misguided. “Every day, approximately 8,000 children are treated in US emergency rooms for fall-related injuries — 2.8 million children per year. The fear-generating issues you hear about so much these days — Bisphenol A in baby bottles, toxic mattresses, off-gassing, lead paint on toys — are microscopically small in comparison.

“It may be that some hysterical blog warning against, like, fleece pajamas, has it right, and lamb jammies are going to kill off a generation, but I choose to believe that what everyone else is doing is reasonably OK.”

Calhoun’s philosophy is hardly radical — a sloganeer might dub it “Perfection in Moderation.” But as the Internet has made it more possible to research all the myriad threats to the point of exhaustion — and to connect with other new parents with opinions of their own — the situation, Calhoun argues, has gotten out of hand. The information comes fast and from all sides, and thus we end up with the breast-feeding-at-all-cost folks and the all-things-organic brigade.

And then there are the poor, uncertain new parents who lose sleep at night wondering whether they made the right decision about the color of little Aiden’s gender-neutral, hand-felted baby bunting. (Don’t even get them started on those murderous slings.)

What riles up today’s perfect-parenters the most? “Everything!” Calhoun laughs. “Sleep training, vaccination schedules, breastfeeding duration, TV before 2, stroller shocks, co-sleeping, circumcision . . . Inspired by a recent study, there was just a huge discussion on the message boards about whether or not having a nanny will turn your infant son into an adulterer. God forbid you relax for a second without looking at every aspect of your baby’s life including the all-important monogamy-potential-in-middle-age angle.”

Calhoun’s measured approach is to find solutions to your problems — say, a child who’s scared to sleep on his own, or a breast-feeding schedule that’s putting your job in peril — that take into account the parents’ need for happiness, as well as that of their child. Make time for your relationship. Don’t try to do it all. Teach your kids that it’s OK — important, even — to bend the rules sometimes and have a little fun. Provide a model of relaxed, healthy living, and if there’s a complication that’s making everyone nuts? Find a pediatrician you like, and trust in their advice. Stop reading every last article on every possible problem that might arise, and don’t beat yourself up if Junior needs to watch a little Nickeleodon because you’re too tired to function one day.

We all want to be perfect parents, and it’s a noble goal. Calhoun gently urges us to remember that it’s not always a very realistic one — particularly when, as she points out, most households need at least one and a half incomes just to stay afloat.

“I think we’re at a crisis point,” Calhoun says. “Too many parents are making themselves and their kids stressed out for no reason. For my friends who want to have kids but are scared, or who are pregnant and terrified, I wanted to communicate these things: that they can have children without losing their own identity, or their partners, or their enjoyment of the world.”